During America’s roughly 25-year love affair with hardtops, the four-door hardtop enjoyed solid popularity in most domestic full-size lines, but the style never really caught on for smaller domestic models. GM tried for six years to sell four-door hardtop versions of its A-body intermediates, but finally gave up after 1972. This 1972 Pontiac Luxury LeMans 4-door hardtop is one of the last of its short-lived, none-too-successful breed.
Although GM had introduced four-door hardtop models to its full-size lines in 1956, it was almost another decade before they tried to apply the same style to smaller cars. Most of the early ’60s GM compacts had offered two-door hardtops sooner or later, but the first less-than-full-size four-door hardtop in the U.S. was the second-generation Corvair sport sedan, introduced for 1965.
Considering that the first-generation Corvair had ended up being far more successful as a sporty coupe than an economy sedan, replacing the pillared sedan with a four-door hardtop was a surprising move, and it didn’t quite pay off, commercially or aesthetically. In profile, the new four-door Corvair looked smashing, particularly in the right color …
… but if you approached it from a slightly different angle, it could suddenly look a bit off. Odd proportions would be a frequent problem with smaller GM four-door hardtops, much more than with GM’s bigger hardtop models. In any event, the Corvair sport sedan sold a decent 54,717 units for 1965, about 23 percent of 1965 Corvair production, but interest dropped off very rapidly after the first year.
Nonetheless, GM went ahead with a four-door hardtop body for the A-body intermediate lines for 1966. Buick and Chevrolet offered the new body style only in their top midsize trim series (Skylark and Malibu respectively), but Pontiac and Oldsmobile, perhaps sensing an opportunity, offered two four-door hardtop models apiece: the Tempest Custom, Tempest LeMans, Olds F-85 Deluxe, and Cutlass Supreme, with base prices ranging from $2,547 to $2,770.
Your mileage may vary, but I find these initial 1966–1967 models the most attractive iteration of the midsize four-door hardtop format. The A-bodies of this generation had a certain semiformal air even in two-door form, so the four-door hardtop doesn’t seem too out of place — 1966 Tempest/LeMans was an awfully good-looking car in any form, although I confess I’m not too keen on those wheel covers.
Still, with its tunneled backlight and the area-ruled Coke-bottle flare to its hips, the Tempest/LeMans was sporty enough that it felt like it ought to be a two-door hardtop. Buyers felt similarly, snapping up 78,109 hardtop coupes and only 13,897 of the four-door LeMans, plus 10,996 Tempest Custom four-door hardtops.
The less-jockish looks of the Oldsmobile F-85/Cutlass better lent themselves to four-door hardtop treatment, and so the Olds sold somewhat better than the Pontiac in 1966: 30,871 of the Cutlass Supreme version pictured above plus 13,924 of the cheaper F-85 Deluxe. By comparison, the 1966 Chevrolet Malibu sport sedan sold only 25,027 units, the Buick Skylark just 20,151. These were not outstanding numbers for GM, and it was probably only offering the four-door hardtop body in so many versions that kept production high enough for the tooling investment to pay off.
GM continued offering intermediate four-door hardtops in the next few generations, but sales remained lackluster. Perhaps the lack of outside competition should have told them something: Other automakers could read a sales chart as well as GM could, and GM’s results in this area hadn’t led to a rush of imitators. Ford tried briefly with a four-door hardtop version of the Torino and Mercury Montego in 1970–1971, but sales were poor.
It wasn’t that American buyers were opposed to four-door hardtops: Domestic automakers sold more than 1.2 million of them in 1971 and another 1.1 million in 1972. However, I think the midsize four-door hardtops ended up falling between two stools. Younger buyers considering an intermediate typically wanted something cool and sporty-looking, and four-door models, even four-door hardtops, were just not cool. For family buyers who saw an intermediate as a cheaper, less-thirsty alternative to a full-size car, paying extra for a hardtop version that was more likely to rattle and leak than a four-door sedan or wagon didn’t make a lot of sense.
It probably didn’t help that GM’s four-door intermediates had gotten the short end of the styling stick after 1967. I’m sure there will be some of you who feel that a 1969 Malibu sedan or 1970 Skylark four-door was the most beautiful car ever to roll out of Detroit, but it’s always seemed to me that the shorter-wheelbase semi-fastback coupes were the major design priority for the GM intermediates of this era, leaving the longer-wheelbase four-door models as somewhat grudging afterthoughts. Judging by the sales figures, many contemporary buyers felt similarly.
I could say a variety of mean things about the styling of this four-door Luxury LeMans, which was not the Pontiac studio’s finest hour. The overall shape wasn’t too bad, but the detailing was very busy, and the fender skirts and wire wheel covers lent it a preciousness I find rather jarring. Compared to the handsome, confident-looking mid-’60s Tempest/LeMans, it’s hard not to see this as a step down. My immediate thought is, “This is a LeMans?!”
There were a lot of oddball details, like the way the rear door overlapped the lower corner of the (optional) Cordova vinyl top, or the thin section of metal between the rear door shut line and the cutout of the wheel skirt (not helped by the skirt on this car being visibly misaligned). Also, even with the body side moldings (standard on the Luxury Le Mans), I can’t help feeling that the sharp horizontal creases of the fenders ought to have come with a discount coupon for the local body shop.
Whatever my feelings about the exterior styling of the four-door A-bodies, they were considerably more habitable for rear-seat occupants than the rather close-coupled coupes. However, judging by the popularity of two-door intermediates throughout the ’70s, contemporary buyers didn’t seem to find back seat room a great selling point in this class.
The Luxury LeMans series was new for 1972, and was offered only in two- or four-door hardtop form. Surprisingly, the four-door version, whose prices started at $3,318.60, outsold the two-door hardtop by more than 4 to 1. That was unusual — the previous year’s LeMans and LeMans Sport four-door hardtops had sold dismally.
Granted, sales of 37,615 cars (plus 8,641 hardtop coupes) didn’t make this a blockbuster, but the four-door Luxury LeMans was the bestseller by far of the GM intermediate four-door hardtops in this final year.
The No. 2 seller in this rapidly vanishing sub-segment was the Malibu four-door hardtop, which Chevrolet still called a sport sedan. With a base price of $3,122, it was cheaper than the Luxury LeMans, although upgrading to the 350-cid V-8 (the 307 was standard) and adding the extra bits of trim and equipment that were standard on the Pontiac would bring the prices pretty close to even.
I find the Malibu more to my liking stylistically than the Luxury LeMans: Its detailing is less overwrought than the Pontiac, and the lack of fender skirts makes it look less precious. Points also for whomever decided to skip the increasingly obligatory vinyl top. However, buyer interest remained limited, and 1972 Malibu sport sedan production totaled only 24,192 cars.
No. 3 in intermediate four-door hardtop sales this year was the Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme hardtop sedan, whose prices started at $3,328.60. This was arguably the best-looking of the four-door A-body hardtops in 1972.
Other than the vinyl roof/rear door overlap (why in the world did they do that?), this is a pretty decent-looking car, and I would rate it the best-styled of this quartet. I’m a bit biased because I really like this color combination, although reviewing the 1972 Oldsmobile dealer SPECS book leads me to think the blue vinyl roof is likely not original.
Oldsmobile buyers strongly preferred the two-door Cutlass Supreme hardtop coupe (which sold 105,087 cars this year), but why this four-door version sold less than half as well as the fussy-looking four-door Luxury LeMans is a mystery for the ages.
Last and regrettably least was the Buick Skylark Custom. In four-door hardtop form, its price started at $3,331.45, near enough to the Pontiac and Oldsmobile as to make no difference, but its rather droopy styling did it no favors. It’s continually amazing how skillfully GM managed to differentiate these very similar cars, but one side effect was that some versions looked definitely better than others.
I guess this four-door hardtop still looked better than a pillared Skylark sedan, and I might have a more favorable reaction if this particular car were some color other than metallic-cookie-dough tan, but I just don’t think the details came together in a very inspiring way. Buyers weren’t enthralled either; production of this model totaled a disheartening 12,925 cars.
Buick’s bigger, pricier B-body four-door hardtops had much better proportions, and sold significantly better: 50,804 LeSabre Customs, 15,160 base LeSabres, and 19,582 Centurions for 1972.
Since sales of the GM intermediate four-door hardtops had never been particularly good, I suspect that none of the four divisions had any great regrets about dropping that body style for the subsequent 1973–1977 generation; it just hadn’t found an audience. (The 1973 four-door Colonnade intermediates were officially called “Colonnade Hardtop Sedans” or “4-door Colonnade Hardtops,” but that was a real reductio ad absurdum argument even for Detroit.)
Some of the intermediate four-door hardtops looked okay, but I think that they ultimately just didn’t make a strong case for themselves. With full-size cars, especially in the luxury field, buyers had embraced the four-door hardtop as an agreeable compromise between four-door utility and hardtop style, but that didn’t seem translate into the cheaper segments, in part because the results seldom looked as good as on the larger models.
When big four-door hardtops expired a few years later, there was some cause for mourning: The downsized four-door sedans and “pillared hardtops” that replaced them were more efficient and better-packaged, but they tended to lose something in the aesthetics department. With the intermediate four-door hardtops, it was easy to forget they’d been offered at all, and there doesn’t seem to be any great rush to preserve them. That’s too bad — four-door models will never be as sought-after as two-doors, but a hardtop, even a slightly oddball hardtop, is always worth a look.
Related Reading
Curbside Classic: 1972 Pontiac Luxury LeMans – Racing Stripes And A Vinyl Roof (by Eric703)
Vintage Review & Commentary: 1972 Pontiac Luxury LeMans – Motown’s Mid-Size Rebel Gets Broughamed (by GN)
All Those Glamorous Four-Door Hardtops, Part 1: The 1950s (by Paul N)
All Those Glamorous Four-Door Hardtops, Part 2: 1960–1964 (by Paul N)
All Those Glamorous Four-Door Hardtops, Part 3: 1965-1969 – Now Available In Sizes S, M, L & XL (by Paul N)
All Those Glamorous Four-Door Hardtops – Hardtop Station Wagons Of The 1950s (by Rich Baron)
The ‘4 Door Pillarless Hardtop’ or “Sport Sedan” as GM called them, in any form, remains a unique U.S. body style, that is finally attracting more and more attention in classic car circles.
It has long been an under appreciated body design and sadly not many survive today. Over the years many 4 door hardtops were sacrificed to restored endless numbers of 2 door hardtops. It’s got to the point that the rare cars today are the 4 door hardtops. A typical car show will display endless rows of coupes but maybe (if your lucky) one 4 door hardtop.
During the 1950s, 1960s and even the 1970s. Any four door pillarless hardtop in Australia was considered seriously exotic. For the most part, the lack of a ‘B’ pillar indicated that the car was ‘fully imported’ rather than having been assembled for imported parts.
It was not a unique U.S. body style. Japanese automakers got quite into them for close to 20 years, some of which I know have found their way into Australia and New Zealand over the years.
Yeah, Japan went with them far longer, and I find that they really spiff up some otherwise dull sedans. Compare the HC Luce 4-door hardtop to the same generation HC 929 in the US. The smoother US front and rear clips would have looked great with the hardtop midsection, and would have been a unique proposition in the US. I just don’t think they’d have passed our side collision standards.
Yes, that’s true, but it was at least 20 years after the USA had introduced 4 door hardtops that Japan copied them, and even then it was only for 3 or 4 years (certainly not “20 Years” have no idea where you got that idea?)
The first Japanese four-door hardtop was in 1973, the last pillarless one was around 1992. That’s a solid two decades, and they were quite popular. Not sure where you got only three or four years.
Aaron,
The Japanese built only few 4 door hardtops and only for 3 or 4 years (not 20 years). And they were not built until a good 20 years after the Americans introduced the body style! The Japanese copied the body style. Simple as that!
No Carl, have a look at the Japanese market to see just how long four-door hardtops lasted there, regardless of whether or not American brands were first to the format. Aaron is right.
I consider any 4-door hardtop seriously exotic, Carl, for exactly the reason you mention. And love them, to this day.
I suspect that for most Americans, anything vaguely exotic (from their domestic cars) has to have 2 doors. Oz is, as is so often the case, a bit odd, in this country’s obsession with the hi-po locals, nearly all of which were four doors. Indeed, the most valuable local is the 4-door 1971 Falcon GTH-O.
Give me a pretty US 4-door hardtop any time. Say, that delicious Corvair will do.
Carl and justy, I saw this just yesterday, it actually made me go weak in the knees.
As someone who came of driving age in 1972 and became a car owner in 1975, I don’t think I ever paid much attention to whether a car was a hardtop or not. Two doors: more affordable, potentially sporty. Four doors: not interesting unless it was a German or Italian car with no two door version.
This Luxury LeMans hardtop sedan not only demonstrates Pontiac’s schizophrenia after John DeLorean’s departure, but is a patently glaring example of GM’s drift away from Alfred Sloan’s “ladder of success” where a customer would climb from Chevrolet to Cadillac over a lifetime. By this time, each division, with the exception of Cadillac, was trying to be all things to all people. Why did Pontiac need to compete with Buick?
I thought the same as well. Being in advertising, I would always ask my consumer-facing clients two questions: “Who is your target customer?” and “Who do you want to be your target customer?” They are not always the same, but you have to figure out how to attract the second without alienating the first. I don’t think anyone asked that question at Pontiac, which is why you end up with the Luxury LeMans. I think if you lost the fenderskirts, the wire wheel covers, the vinyl top, and then leaned into a sporty Pontiac look with alloys and bucket seats with a console, it might have been a bit more successful. Still, coupes were fashionable, so how many more might you have sold? Of course, the dealers want to make the sale, so not only were they competing with the Pontiac dealer across town, but they were also competing with the Chevrolet dealer down the block, the Oldsmobile dealer across the street, the Buick dealer two blocks away, as well as the Dodge dealer and the Ford dealer on the same block. Customers were happy to buy into this until the brands lost meaning.
With the implosion of the muscle car era, everyone started chasing “luxury”. There’s not much profit in a base line car, but there margins are huge on the additional options and trims. Do you think it cost Pontiac any more to build a 389 or 421 engine than a 326?
So they turned to luxury, with vinyl tops and decor packages and “luxury” trim levels. Everyone was doing this by 1970 or so, and it would not have made any sense for Pontiac not to. But it didn’t come off very well; all their cars (big and mid-sized) started looking very puffy and blobby, having lost the taut lines of the ’60s.
FWIW, the “Sloan Ladder” had almost totally collapsed by the mid ’50s (if not earlier) with Buick selling huge numbers of Specials and Chevy’s Nomad wagon costing more than a Buick Century hardtop coupe and Buick and Olds fielding top-end versions of the Roadmaster Limited/Electra and 98 that were totally in Cadillac territory.
I think a subtle factor in Pontiac’s intermediate-full size luxury awkwardness was shuffling the Grand Prix off to the intermediate platform. The Grand Prix was always on the luxury end of the spectrum in its equipment and presentation, albeit with potent powerplants with it during the hot 60s, and it was the halo model for which the full size Pontiacs aspired. Moving it down to the intermediate platform took away that direction for which big Pontiacs never quite recovered
And it effected the intermediates too, the GTO to the A bodies was essentially the GP to the Bs, it was the style leader for which lowly Tempests still benefit from in their shared sheetmetal. With the GP now the king of intermediates and the GTO market going on terminal decline, the standard intermediate line just like the full size line had no real direction.
Ultimately it’s no surprise the cars that really carried Pontiac through the 70s was in fact the Grand Prix as well as Firebird they were the only two cars in Pontiac’s arsenal that read as cohesive efforts
Yeah, I think the Colonnade LeMans struggled visibly with trying to figure out how they could position a fancier LeMans series relative to the Grand Prix. In retrospect, you can see the problem, but it ended up looking pretty desperate, like they were flailing for direction.
To some extent, Chevrolet suffered that with the Chevelle/Malibu as well: A lot of the great success of the 1973–1977 Monte Carlo was that it had essentially absorbed a lot of the two-door Malibu market; the Monte wasn’t that much more expensive, and it offered a lot more flamboyant style for the money. However, Chevrolet was Chevrolet, so even a weakened Malibu still sold well enough.
Pontiac had the additional problem of being squeezed between Chevrolet and Oldsmobile. Chevrolet had the low end pretty well sewn up, and if you wanted a more luxurious intermediate, a Cutlass or Cutlass Supreme was a better deal than a Luxury LeMans or Grand LeMans, with better materials, better assembly quality, and a better repair record.
Where Pontiac really got hit hard was in the ’80s when GM under Roger Smith was, if not completely unable to understand what made a sport sedan more appealing and more of a premium Nice Car than a similarly compact-sized transportation appliance, certainly unwilling to put in the cost-per-unit to make it happen.
It should be said that Pontiac had tried that with the LeMans Sport the year before (although the four-door hardtop had come with a notchback bench rather than buckets; I’d have to look at the Accessorizer to see if you could even order buckets on a four-door, but I’m thinking not).
It did not sell well at all in four-door form: only 2,451 cars in 1971, plus 3,186 LeMans four-door hardtops.
Being a child of the 1950s and coming of age in the 1960s my automotive style choices have remained reasonably constant. Its either hardtop or no top. Sedans leave me cold, SUV’s leave me frozen in disbelieve.
My mid-life crisis resulted in my becoming a full time graduate student with a focus in design with an emphasis on generational issues / preferences. Just last week I read and interesting article about the future of auto design preferences that mirror decades of generational studies. That being one generation tends to reject the previous generation preferences, we don’t want what our parents liked. Generational studies going back to the early 20c back this up.
Children growing up with mini-vans, switched to SUV’s, so down went mini-van sales. SUV sales went up, four-door sedans went down. Now children who grew up in their parents SUV’s, history indicates they are going to want something different. So what is the next move for the auto industry in the coming years? The author of the article suggests it might be a new interpretation of the four-door sedan. I doubt if we will ever see a new four-door hardtop but stylistically that would be sweet. Nobody drives with their windows down anymore to enjoy the rush of natural air (that why I enjoy my convertible).
Regarding the featured 1972 Pontiac LeMans four-door hardtop…I would be happy to own this car. I am not a fan of many four-doors, not a fan of vinyl tops then or now, but this one makes me stop and look. I am not a fan of Ivy green, Forest green, most of the 1960s-70s obsession with greens (except emerald greens) but this Springfield Green with a green Cordova vinyl top, factory skirts w/wire wheel caps just makes me stop and look, and I like what I see. I would not change a thing on this car. I admit I am not the best style judge of this car. Restraint was never represented in my design portfolio as l spent a career designing Couture fashion stores & casino hotels.
I agree with you…especially on two counts; first, there is nothing better than a top-down convertible drive on a beautiful day, and second, for some unexplainable reason this Luxury LeMans speaks to me, too.
Pontiac really went off on a tangent, from rather handsome cars in the late 60s, to these abominations. The design of this 1972 Lemans was far too busy all around, too many design features here and there, and overall profile of long hood and short deck was exaggerated. It is far too busy.
Let’s have a crease in the middle of the side of the car, and then add chrome body side moldings down below. Someone go get the fender skirt guy to throw some on here because we did that before. The grille looks like it needs some orthodontia, and let’s make the taillights look different from Buick by hiding them way down low in the bumper.
Like dman, I never paid attention to whether a car was a hardtop or a sedan, just the number of doors mattered most to me.
I agree with KMM above, make it a simpler design, and focus on your target customer. Or be ready to release the all new 1973 LeMans knife job they already had in the studio, for an even worse look.
I have been on the lookout for the 4 door hardtop version of one of those GM A bodies forever to photograph and write up, and have found precisely one – a 67 Buick Skylark that occasionally appears at local shows. They were not exactly rare when new, but they weren’t common either – especially for something from GM.
I have always found the 68-72 A body sedans to be butt-ugly, but I like the 4 door hardtop a lot.
I’ll try to answer 2 of your questions – why fender skirts? Pontiac probably used them as much as anyone in the 60s (certainly 65 on) so they were kind of a Pontiac thing on higher end models. And the little trim piece that tried to look like it was part of the vinyl roof was necessary unless the base of the vinyl trim got raised higher on the quarter panel/C pillar, which would have looked worse.
For me if the fender skirts match the shape of the seam(aka the normal wheel opening) they look ok, but when fender skirts try to square off an otherwise totally round wheel opening that arch shaped seam line stands out and looks really really bad.
I can’t excuse away that little trim piece either, it’s not like GM didn’t anticipate vinyl tops being fitted to 4 doors from the start where they could have rethought that door to quarter relationship(which with or without a vinyl top is awkward to begin with. I’d expect that sort of thing on a carryover body never intended for it but that’s definitely not the case here, it looked like a mistake right from the start.
I’m almost certain that the rear doors had to have that little upswing at the rear in order for the rear window to roll down all the way. if it wasn’t there, the window would have had to be longer at the bottom and caused interference. This is a common issue with rear door windows, and why the ’77-up GM B/C bodies had that additional fixed window at the rear of the door. That would explain that awkward little chunk of vinyl roof, as of course they anticipated having them on these cars. An unfortunate structural compromise.
Ah I bet you’re right! Those rear doors have been a mystery to me for years but that does make the most sense!
The other thing that occurred to me with the vinyl piece is I wonder if they could have eschewed it had they installed the tops “halo” style as seen on a few other GMs in the 68-72 period
Full-size Fords and Chryslers also used halo-style roofs, which usually avoided that issue.
My aesthetic objection is not to the shape of the rear door, it’s to their not having come up with a roof design that didn’t look like somebody had made a bad mistake on the assembly line and tried to play it off.
It gives me the impression that the designers gave fisher body the unfinished clay buck and they realized “uhh, did the designers tell us where we’re supposed to put the glass is in these things?”
I agree with your assessments on these cars. The overarching issue in the late ’60s and ’70s was that the two-door coupe body style became hugely popular and completely overshadowed the 4-doors, sedan or hardtop. People didn’t care about the reduced rear legroom; the coupes were the only way to go. I’ve said this many times before: Mustang (and Camaro) buyers traded in their cars for mid-size coupes as the pony cars really were too small in the back seat for their growing kids. The mid size coupes are the direct successors to all those millions of basic Mustang coupes that were sold in the years 1964-1968. But nobody was going to trade a Mustang in for a 4-door Malibu or LeMans. Those were bought by a totally different demographic: older buyers who thought the full-size cars were too big (which they were).
Exactly. People still were on the “two doors are safer for the kids” kick as well. Given that my mother actually fell out of the back seat of a car when she was a child as it was turning at an intersection, there probably was something to that. (Luckily it was low speed and she escaped with some scrapes and bruises.)
Obviously wagons were the exception, but I suspect those were owned mostly by families with 3 or more kids, and presumably by the time you needed one, your eldest kids were old enough to keep their hands off the door release, and the younger ones went in the wayback.
Haven’t heard the term “wayback” in a long time (now it’s “3rd Row”)…brings back memories of riding there in our ‘61 Country Squire!
I wondered how that Luxury LeMans would have look with the GTO Endura nose who was available for other LeMans models during the 1971-72 model years like this one? https://imgur.com/a/GcIrP
And the Endura nose was also available as an options for wagons as well.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070224061947/http://www.pontiacstreetperformance.com/psp/rebuild455jh99.html
With a more extravagant interior and some styling cues, that green LLM could have been a pre=Seville. Anyone skilled with AI to make one?
Haven’t gotten past the Corvair yet, but I wanted to say that you’re absolutely right; that is the correct color for a Corvair. Either that or the silvery blue that also was on the 63-67 Corvette.
I’d take any of the second-gen Corvair body styles, though given how I’d use it here in CA, a convertible would probably make the most sense. Fit it with modern EFI engine management and turbocharger with intercooler, and I’m sure 200 hp at the wheels would be pretty easily attainable, and plenty for that sort of car.
In addition to a 4-door hardtop being more likely to rattle and leak than a four-door sedan or wagon there were also safety considerations and Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) related to Roof Crush Resistance that contributed to its eventual downfall. Even before FMVSS rules went into effect (notably FMVSS 216/216a which first went into effect on September 1, 1973) there were buyers concerned about safety who avoided hardtop bodystyles in general, and 4-door hardtops in particular, because of safety considerations.
Theoretically, in the event of a rollover accident, the roof of a hardtop (without the support from a center pillar) was more likely to collapse and injure the occupants than the roof of a pillared coupe or sedan. 4-door hardtops almost always had longer passenger compartments and correspondingly longer roofs with thinner C-pillars than 2-door hardtops and were usually considered less safe than pillared sedans and even less safe than pillarless 2-door hardtops (with their shorter roofs and usually thicker C-pillars) in the event of a rollover accident.
I do rather suspect that the implied safety of a pillared coupe or sedan over a pillarless coupe or sedan may have been a perception that was not born out in reality.
Even before the regulations went into effect, the threat of the federal laws contributed to pillarless hardtop and convertible bodystyles being removed from production by most auto manufacturers who sold cars in the U.S. Yes, an exception was eventually made to allow the continued production of convertibles even though most of them don’t meet the standard.
No doubt, if not for FMVSS, Japanese manufacturers would have probably offered their 4-door hardtops for sale in the U.S. It seems like only Mercedes-Benz was able to engineer 2-door hardtops that could meet the federal U.S. rollover standards without a center pillar. I’m not sure if Bentley and Rolls Royce (who have recently sold small numbers of hardtop coupes in the U.S.) actually meet the standards or if they’ve been granted exemptions because of the comparatively low numbers of pillarless hardtop coupes they actually sell in the U.S.
The Japanese manufacturers were very successful with 4-door hardtops in their home market. What would not have gone over well in North America is the rear windows did not fully retract on many of them. Buyers here would expect all four windows to fully lower on a hardtop.
1988 Nissan Cedric.
I can see why four door hardtops were never a big success. My uncle had a 1970 Catalina four door hardtop. That thing rattled, squeaked and leaked. It was so bad he traded it on a 1970 Buick, get this, four door hardtop. That thing rattled, squeaked and leaked even worse than the Pontiac.
I’ve never been a fan of four door hardtops; they rattle and squeak simply too much. Regarding the 1968-72 GM intermediates in 4-door sedan configuration; I always thought the C-pillars on these vehicles were terrible looking, the C pillar on the four door hardtops was much more attractive. I’ve always wondered why both body styles could not have use the same design.
My ’69 Cutlass Holiday Sedan 4 dr hardtop didn’t leak or rattle one bit with all new window and door rubber from Steele. On a new one it took quite a number of years of wear and weathering before they began to do that.
I expected some mention of Chrysler Corporation wisely eschewing the four-door hardtop of its intermediate models. They never would have seen a return on the tooling investment. I imagine American Motors never considered them.
Now then you mention it, the Dodge Polara and Plymouth Belvedere/Fury was available with a 4-door hardtop in the last model year (1964) when they was “full-size” model who evolved from the 1962 “plucked chicken” before they was rechristened as mid-size intermediate for the 1965 model year, the Fury and Polara nameplates moved to the new C-body for 1965, while Belvedere soldiered on the mid-size field and Dodge used the opportunity to dust off the Coronet monicker for their 1965 mid-size model. They could have let the 4-door hardtop living one more model year for their “new” mid-size Belvedere/Coronet before the big restyling for the 1966 model year.
The “plucked chickens” were the true full size ’62-64 Newport and Custom 880, not the ’62-64 B-body Belvedere/440/Polara.
Yes, thankyou. It’s amazing how durable this misinterpretation remains. What happens when it gets wide repetition until recently, I guess.
Oh, and Imperial. Those ’61 fins were like swan’s wings. 😉
It’s curious that the ’61 full-size Plymouth underwent the treatment a year early. Probably some combination of realizing that vertical fins were out and some foreshadowing of the planned ’62 S Class, especially at the rear.
Yes, it was a sunk cost. Should have run it in ’65, maybe as part of a Chrysler line. What price Chrysler Coronado?
Although I shudder to think what the ’66-’67s would have looked like,
On the contrary, American Motors, not GM, was the originator of the smaller than full size four door hardtop. The 108” wheelbase Rambler was available as a four door hardtop sedan and wagon from 1956-60, as was the ‘58-‘60 117” wheelbase Ambassador.
But GM was 1st in full-size having introduced them in mid-year 1955. Ambassador would have to be considered full-size with a 117″ wb, tho’ Rambler was sort of in-between.
Somebody in one of the senior citizen, highrises where I grew up had a yellow “Lemans”, hardtop. Was about the year of this green one. Can’t say if it did//didn’t have fender skirts.
Top was brown. It was always in about the same spot; rarely moved.
Recall seeing it senior, year of h/s through about “1984”. ((five year span))
No memory of seeing it “close up”.
All the creases and trim on the side give Torino vibes. Anyone else feel the same?
Four-door and two-door buyers were entirely differen demographics. Nobody ever crossed-shopped the two. Even into the 1980s, for a young single guy, a four-door was the kiss of death. As someone mentioned, it was a two-door or nothing. This mind set only began to change in the 1990s. I remember laughing my head off the first few times I saw a FOUR-door Honda Civic modified with fancy wheels and an aftermarket spoiler, driven by a young kid. In my day, it just wasn’t done. That’s what two-doors were for.
Anyone who thinks that this Pontiac would have looked better if it lost all the fancy trim and was styled more like an earlier GTO is completely missing the point. That’s a very modern view. Nobody would have gone for a four-door car like that in 1972. The muscle car era was over. This car was more like a Cadillac Seville, luxury in a smaller package. They even called it Luxury right in the model name. It was meant for a somewhat older buyer who wanted the same Brougham-tastic chariot as a big Bonneville, only smaller, and with the hardtop adding a little extra bit of style.
For the record, I like it. It’s a lot more rare an interesting than all the resto-modded muscle car clones at every car show. The Luxury LeMans is not among the greatest Pontiacs of all time, but still a very nice one, if one accepts it for what it was in its proper context.
My Aunt had the Buick version shown, except color was some kind of Banana yellow.
Main problem was these Body styles worked SO good as 2 doors, just not much one can do when you have to add 2 more doors in the back. I guess I’m saying (and maybe it’s been noted) that it’s not that they were ‘Mid sizers’ (which was just not AS big as “full size”), but the shape that made em odd looking 4 doors.